Thursday, February 28, 2008

Don't be a stranger to Anniyan no more.

If somebody was to ask me for the most entertaining film I know, I would answer Anniyan (Tamil for 'stranger') before they had a chance to finish the question.

For Anniyan, Tamil director Shankar's big budget superhit from 2005, contains everything a movie ticket ought to buy you. It has the visuals, the comedy, the action, the romance and a bit of social significance, as well. It's just a big damn movie.

And it's awesome.

The picture here is just an example of the outrageously whacky visuals you get with Shankar films. And how can you not adore them? It's nuts! It's colourful! He also abuses special effects mercilessly, which amuses me greatly.

The plot of the film tells of Ambi (Vikram), a pedantic lawyer, who annoys just about everybody around him. The girl he loves (Sada) is equally unimpressed with the way he deals with problems in society; he will not let a wrong-doing go, and will lecture at people about even the smallest things. Meanwhile, somebody is murdering people in very unusual ways. Ambi's friend (Vivek) works together with the DCP (Prakash Raj) to solve these cases..

If that sounded boring to you, don't worry. Vikram plays three characters in the film, and Vivek provides some of the funniest comedy I've ever seen. And when the film has an occasional lapse in quality, the hillarity doesn't stop there.

Just youtube the song "Remo remo". I dare you not to laugh your head off.

Yep. Anniyan is a film not to be taken too seriously. You can take in the social message, ponder it, turn it upside down, I will even discuss and debate it with you, should you want it. But at core Anniyan sets out to entertain and oh boy, does it ever. I've seen the movie nearly 10 times and never does it fail to do just that.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe I will need to rethink Tamil films...I've hated the ones I've seen (except Mani Ratnam's) so much that I'd given up on them. But this looks highly entertaining! Love the buses in the screen shot above :-)

veracious said...

Well, you could say Tamil films are an acquired taste. You have to be able to stomach violence as a form of entertainment, extremely hero-centric films (read: heroines do not get much of a break). That's not something a typical Hindi film fan might be nuts about. With that said, masala like Anniyan is not all there is to Tamil cinema, so the Maniratnam slightly more alternative type of cinema can offer something more.

I think I mostly like Tamil cinema because I fell madly in love with a couple of its stars.

Shweta Mehrotra Gahlawat said...

Thanks! that answers my need for what Tamil movie to see :) Its on the list....now to figure out a way to locate the movie.